Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford

CHAPTER XXIII

A CORNER IN FARMERS IS FORMED AND IT BEHOLDS A MOST WONDERFUL VISION

It was already high time for fall planting operations on the Wallingford estate, and Truscot County was a-quiver with what might be the result of the new-fangled test-tube farming that Ham Tinkle was to inaugurate. From the first moment of his hiring that young enthusiast plunged into his work with a fervor that left him a scant six hours of sleep a night.

In the meantime J. Rufus took a flying trip to Chicago, where he visited one broker's office after another. Those places with fine polished woodwork and brass trimmings and expensive leather furniture he left without even introducing himself – such stage settings were too much in his own line of business for him not to be suspicious of them – but, finally, he wandered into the office of Fox & Fleecer, a dingy, poorly lighted place, where gas was kept burning on old-fashioned fixtures all day long, where the woodwork was battered and blackened, where the furniture was scratched and hacked and bound together with wires to keep it intact, and where, on a cracked and splintered blackboard, one small and lazy boy posted, for a score or so of rusty men past middle age, the fluctuating figures of the Great Gamble. Mr. Fox, a slow-spoken and absolutely placid gentleman of benevolent appearance and silvery mutton-chop whiskers, delicately blended the impressions that while he was indeed flattered by this visit from so distinguished a gentleman, his habitual conservatism would not allow him to express his delight.

"How much money can you be trusted with?" asked Wallingford bluntly.

"I would not say, sir," rejoined Mr. Fox with no resentment whatever. "We have been thirty years in these same offices, and we never yet have had enough in our hands to make it worth while for us to quit business. Permit me to show you our books."

His ledger displayed accounts running as high as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that had been intrusted to their care by single individuals. But thirty years in business at the same old stand! He insisted gently upon this point, and Wallingford nodded his head.

"Before I'm through I'll make all these bets look like cigar money," he asserted, "but just now I'm going to put fifty thousand in your hands, and I want it placed in exactly this way: Monday morning, with ten thousand dollars buy me one hundred thousand bushels of December wheat on a ten-cent margin. No more money will be put up on this deal, so place a stop-loss order against it. If wheat drops enough to wipe out the ten thousand dollars, all right; say nothing and report the finish of the transaction to me. I'll do my own grinning. If wheat goes up enough to leave me five cents a bushel profit, clear of commissions, close the deal and remit. On the following Monday, if wheat has gone up from the quotations of to-day, sell one hundred thousand bushels more at ten cents margin and close at a sufficient drop to net me five cents clear. If it has gone down, buy. Do this on five successive Mondays and handle each deal separately. Get me one winning out of five. That's all I want."

Mr. Fox considered thoughtfully for a moment, carefully polishing his bald, pink scalp around and around with the palm of his hand. He gave the curious impression of being always engaged with some blandly interesting secret problem along with the business under consideration.

"Very well, sir," he observed. "Fox & Fleecer never makes any promises, but if you will put your instructions into writing I will place them in the hands of our Mr. Fleecer, who conducts our board operations. He will do the best he can for you."

Mr. Wallingford looked about him for a stenographer. There was none employed here, and, sitting down to the little writing table which was pointed out to him, he made out the instructions in long hand, while Mr. Fox polished away at his already glistening pate, still working at that blandly interesting secret problem.

Ten days later, at the test-tube farm, arrived a report from Messrs. Fox & Fleecer, inclosing their check for fifteen thousand dollars. Wheat, in the week following Wallingford's purchase, had fortunately gone up nearly six cents. This check, and the accompanying statement of the transaction which had brought it forth, Wallingford showed to Ham Tinkle, quite incidentally, of course, and Ham, in awe and enthusiasm, confided the five-thousand-dollar winning to Hiram Hines, who spread the report through Truscot County that Judge Wallingford had already made fifteen thousand dollars in wheat since he had come among them. The savings of an ordinary lifetime! The amount was fifty thousand when it reached Mapes County. Two weeks later Messrs. Fox & Fleecer reported on the second of Wallingford's deals. Wheat sold at ninety-four had dropped to eighty-eight. Luck was distinctly with J. Rufus Wallingford.

"Why, oh, why, do cheap skates sell gold bricks and good come-on men waste their talents on Broadway!" wailed Blackie Daw. "But what's the joke, J. Rufus? I see your luck, but where do the surrounding farmers get in? Or where do you get in on the surrounding farmers? Show me. I'm an infant."

"You couldn't understand it, Blackie," said J. Rufus with condescending kindness. "The mere fact that you look on these pocket-change winnings as real money lets you out. Wait till I spring the big game. To-morrow night you shall attend this winter's opening meeting of the Philomathean Literary Society at the Willow Creek schoolhouse, and observe the methods of a real bread winner."

For the memorable occasion that he had mentioned, Wallingford wore a fur-lined overcoat and quadruple-woven blue silk sweater, and, being welcomed with great acclaim, proposed for debate that burning question: "Resolved: That the farmer is a failure as a business man."

With much stamping and pawing of the air that subject was thrashed out by Abe Johnson and Dan Price for the affirmative, and Cal Whorley and Ed Wiggin for the negative. The farmer as a gold-brick purchaser, as prey for every class of tradesmen, as a producer who received less net profit than any other from the capital and labor invested, was presented to himself by men who knew their own grievances well, and the affirmative was carried almost unanimously. Flushed with pleasure, beaming with gratification, the most advanced farmer of them all arose in his place and requested of the worthy chairman the privilege to address the meeting, a privilege that was granted with pleasure and delight.

It was an eventful moment when J. Rufus Wallingford stalked up the middle aisle, passed around the red-hot, cannon-ball stove and ascended the rostrum which had been the scene of so many impassioned addresses; and, as he turned to face them from that historic elevation, he seemed to fill the entire end of the schoolroom, to blot out not only the teacher's desk but the judges' seats, the blackboard and the four-colored map of the United States that hung upon the wall behind him. He was a fine-looking man, a solid-looking man, a gentleman of wealth and culture, who, unspoiled by good fortune, was still a brother to all men. Already he had gained that enviable reputation among them.

Friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers, it was startling to reflect that the agriculturist was the only producer in all the world who had no voice in the price which was put upon his product! The manufacturer turned out his goods and set a price upon them and the consumer had to pay that price. And how was this done? By the throttling of competition. And how had competition been throttled? By consolidation of all the interests in any particular line of trade. Iron and steel were all controlled by one mighty corporation against which could stand no competitor except by sufferance; petroleum and all its by-products were in the hands of another, and each charged what it liked. The farmer alone, after months of weary, unending toil, of exposure in all sorts of weather, of struggle against the whims of nature and against an appalling list of possible disasters, himself hauled his output to market and meekly accepted whatever was offered him. Prices on every product of the soil were dictated by a clique of gamblers who, in all probability, had never seen wheat growing nor cattle grazing. Friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers, this woeful condition must end! They must coöperate! Once compacted the farmers could stand together as firm as a rock, could demand a fair and reasonable and just price for their output, and get it. To-day wheat was quoted at ninety-four cents on the Chicago Board of Trade. If the farmer, however, secured eighty-two at his delivery point in actual cash he was doing well. There was no reason why the farmers should not agree to establish a standing price of a dollar and a half a bushel for wheat; and that must be their slogan. Wheat at a dollar and a half!

He was vitally interested in this project, and he was willing to spend his life and fortune for it; and, in the furtherance of it, he invited his friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers to assemble at his house on the following Saturday night and discuss ways and means to bring this enormous movement to a practical working basis. Incidentally he might find a bite and a sup and a whiff of smoke to offer them. All those who would attend would please rise in their seats.

As one man they arose, and when J. Rufus Wallingford, glowing with the immensity of his noble project, stepped down from that platform, the walls of the Willow Creek schoolhouse echoed and reechoed with the cheers which followed his speech.

The Farmers' Commercial Association! There had been farmers' affiliations without number, with motives political, economical, educational; alliances for the purchasing of supplies at wholesale and for every other purpose under the sun, but nothing like this, for, to begin with, the Farmers' Commercial Association had no initiation fee and no dues, and it had for its sole and only object the securing of a flat, uniform rate of a dollar and a half a bushel for wheat. The first meeting, attended by every able-bodied tiller of the soil in Truscot County and some even from Mapes County, was so large that there was no place in the Wallingford homestead to house it, and it had to be taken out to the great new barn, where, in the spacious aisle between stalls and mows, enthusiasm had plenty of room to soar to the rafters. One feature had stilled all doubts: J. Rufus Wallingford alone was to pay!

With a whoop the association was organized, Judge Wallingford was made its president, and with great enthusiasm was authorized to go ahead and spend all of his own money that he cared to lay out for the benefit of the association. Only one trifling duty was laid upon the members. President Wallingford introduced an endless chain letter. It was brief. It was concise. It told in the fewest possible words just why the Farmers' Commercial Association had been formed and what it was expected to do, laying especial stress upon the fact that there were to be no initiation fees and no dues, no money to be paid for anything! All that the members were to do was to join, and when enough were in, to demand one dollar and a half for their wheat. It was a glittering proposition, for there was no trouble and no expense and no risk, with much to gain. Every one of the ninety-odd who gathered that night in Wallingford's barn was to write three or more of these letters to wheat-growing acquaintances, and each recipient of a letter was told that the only thing which need be done to enroll himself as a member of the order was to write three more such letters and send in his name to Horatio Raven, Secretary.

Horatio Raven himself was there. There was a barrel of good, hard cider on tap in the barn, and every few minutes Mr. Raven could be seen conducting one or two acquaintances quietly over to the cellar, where there were other things on tap. Cigars were passed around, and the good cheer which was provided became so inextricably mingled with the enthusiasm which had been aroused, that no farmer could tell which was which. It only sufficed that when they went away each one was profoundly convinced that J. Rufus Wallingford was the Moses who should lead the farmers of America out of their financial Wilderness.

During the next two or three days nearly three hundred letters left Truscot and Mapes counties, inviting nearly three hundred farmers in the great wheat belt, extending from the Rockies to the Appalachians, to take full sixty per cent. more for their produce than the average price they had always been receiving, to invite others to receive like benefits, and all to accept this boon without money and without price. It was personal solicitation from one man to another who knew him, and the first flood that went out reached every wheat-growing State in the Union. Within a week, names and requests for further information began pouring in upon Horatio Raven, Secretary, and the card index drawers in the filing cabinet, originally bought in jest, became of actual service. One, then two, then three girls were installed. A pamphlet was printed explaining the purpose of the Farmers' Commercial Association, and these were sent to all "members," J. Rufus Wallingford furnishing both the printing and the postage.